King and Country Debate

I was researching the general field of debate when I came across "world's most prestigious debating society" and its famous debate.

My prior position is that debating societies reliably disappoint me. However, of the set of all things which at one point disappointed me, I have come to find value in many of them after more thoroughly investigation. Nevertheless, I was confident that Oxford Union would disappoint me.

Soon, I was reading that,

"It is no mere coincidence that the only country fighting for the cause of peace, Soviet Russia, is the country that has rid itself of the war-mongering clique."

Communism: for when you just aren't prestigious enough! Though the resemblance to anarchist rhetoric should not be denied,[1] one should also not deny the how hilariously wrong the dove side already is. Fighting for peace? No war-mongering clique? I can guess that Kenelm Digby had no shame and wasn't the least embarrassed by that little thing we called the Cold War. I wonder how he felt about the Gulags; they weren't dying in war, per se...

It was looking good for my preconceptions. There's of course more amusing absurdities that follow that line, but the real clincher has nothing much to do with Digby.

"What is generally forgotten (but arguably more significant as an example of the Union's commitment to freedom of speech) is that an attempt was made by several prominent Union members (including Randolph Churchill) to expunge this motion and the result of the debate from the Union's minute book. This attempt was roundly defeated — in a meeting far better attended than the original debate. Sir Edward Heath records in his memoirs that Randolph Churchill was then chased around Oxford by undergraduates who intended to debag him (i.e. humiliate him by removing his trousers), and was then fined by the police for being illegally parked."

"We're for peace! And we'll beat up anyone who disagrees with us!"

Just in case you think this is insufficient evidence for hypocrisy, I found more. Focus especially on the last two sentences.

"Speaking after the debate, Digby said: "I believe that the motion was representative neither of the majority of the undergraduates of Oxford nor of the youth of this country. I am certain if war broke out tomorrow the students of the university would flock to the recruiting office as their fathers and uncles did."^[3] He was proved right. [...] McCallum recalled at the outbreak of war two students, "men of light and leading in their college and with a good academic record", visited him to say goodbye before leaving to join their units. Both of them had separately said that if they had to vote on the "King and Country" resolution then and there, they would do so. One of them said: "I am not going to fight for King and Country, and you will notice that no one, not Chamberlain, not Halifax, has asked us to".^[12]"

Yes, the anarchists in the audience can relax. The Oxford Union stands for Stalin, not non-violence, pretences to the contrary notwithstanding.

Oh, and by the way, Oxford Union can go ahead and 'free speech' my ass.


[1] Anarchists; peace is always better than aggressive war and war is the result of a minority with the ability to externalize the costs of war. No coercive minority, no war. (War to defend property within one's borders is not by this definition aggressive.)

Bayesian Regress

I was fascinated to discover that the Bayesian reasoner's probability of Bayes' formula being true calculates to zero.

I should start by mentioning that my probability estimate for Bayes' formula being useful is 100%. At least I hope so, since I often use it.

To calculate the probability using Bayesian analysis requires assuming the Bayes formula - in classical terms, begging the question. But, I thought, perhaps the series can converge? Every run-through changes the probability assigned to the Bayes' formula step of the calculation, so it needs to be run until it settles down. However, any sub-unity number multiplied by itself enough times converges to zero. It's an article of Bayesian reasoning that no priors can be unity. Oops.

Bayes' formula was discovered and proved within the context of classical logic, and indeed even the Bayesian reasoner must use one prior step of classical logic before they go on their statistical voyage. They must assume that Bayes' formula is unconditionally true.

There's a similar problem estimating the odds of yourself being mistaken. If you run the calculation once, perhaps you get a reasonable number, like 2%. But this calculation is reflexive - the odds that you're mistaken about being that mistaken is 2%. Works out to a 3.96% chance of being mistaken. But it's reflexive, so...a Bayesian calculation shows I have a 100% chance of being mistaken on every subject. Therefore, I'm wrong that you can understand the individual words I'm now typing.

Though clearly nonsense, I enjoy this result because I've often suspected that self-doubt in the usual sense can't be logically upheld. Especially if I'm not evaluating evidence, but taking action, the correct course is insensitive to doubt. If I'm faced with a black box with several buttons, one of which will serve my goals if pushed, whether I assume I have a 30% chance of being wrong or a 0% chance, I push the same button. It only changes if I have a higher estimate of being right for some other button - but it changes instantly and entirely, so again my action indistinguishable from one with utter certainty.

Logicking at Black Holes 2, Digressing Onto LHC

So I was thinking about black holes some more, and I concluded that the nascent event horizon will indeed prevent its own formation...unless space is quantized. Infalling particles would jump directly from a region of finite time dilation to inside the event horizon. This gets interesting as Einstein's relativity is inconsistent with quantized space, so we'd need to update the theory of gravity, and quantized gravity may not have a black hole solution in the first place. Although if not, it is likely to have something similar, what with all those massive dark astral objects.


There's also some housekeeping regarding my previous post. I'm glad someone else has noticed that black holes should prevent themselves from forming. Truth is available to everyone, which means that independent discovery should happen with basically every true idea. Only lies can be truly creative and unique. (Indeed I just found an argument that the classical black hole would reverse its own time before an event horizon is formed...in short, nature abhors an infinity.)[1]


However, the large hadron collider is not dangerous. While Hawking's calculation may not be consistent with an actual unified quantum gravity, it is consistent with things like thermodynamics #2; even if Hawking is wrong in the details there is every reason to think that black holes decay. For example, using my ideas (or Pegrume's) the black hole is really a collection of almost-infinitely redshifted objects. Hawking relied on the sharp event horizon, but imagine instead that a virtual particle pair forms, one half annihilates a real particle, and the other tunnels out. Essentially this is a captured particle tunnelling out of the black hole, and thus a loss of mass, and thus, Hawking radiation, even though half of Hawking's assumptions were counter-assumed away. The result is robust like this in several ways.

Considering a micro black hole, I remember that matter is in fact mostly empty space, and that the thing which makes a black hole is gravitational gradient. So this micro black hole is basically a few massively redshifted particles very close together, but the dangerous volume they create is smaller than a proton; beyond this their fields appear completely normal, for example a black hole doesn't amplify gravity, so the gravitational attraction will be that of a few individual particles, exactly as they were before the atom smashing. Between small volumes and empty space, unless the phenomenon is completely stable, it will decay before it manages to grow enough to stabilize.

Using the maximum possible energy the LHC can produce, assuming all of the energy is captured by the black hole, it would have a Schwarzschild radius of less than a Planck length.
Let me say that again: less than a Planck length. A lot less, like ten orders of magnitude less. Don't forget that most neutrinos can make it through the entire Earth without touching anything. The cross section of a neutrino is way, way higher than a Planck length.

Further, virtual particles swarm around real particles; this phenomenon is responsible for shielding some of the naked charge of the electron, for example. Clouds of virtual particles should corrode the black holes.[2]

Similarly, the idea that the LHC will somehow do things not before seen in nature is preposterous human hubris. Every time before we thought we've been clever, we've been shown up, often by 'lowly' creatures like sea cucumbers, or random comets. While it's impossible to rule out total destruction, the correct odds for the LHC in particular are exactly those of any new technology, like internal combustion. Even assuming we do eventually manage global apocalypse, we're not going to know it might happen beforehand.

Every single factor is stacked against catastophe, even though consensus physics is wildly wrong about black holes.[3]


[1] Pegrume wants the index linked. First, he should say so on the individual pages, I was checking for crankishness when I found the request. (He certainly lacks a proofreader, as attested by a serious problem typing with 'none' instead of 'non.') Second, his request is unreasonable, but luckily he provided the reasons, so I'm interpreting it.

[2] Real black holes theoretically emit less Hawking radiation than they receive in cosmic radiation. They're big enough to have a noticeable cross section to catch radiation, and Hawking radiation drops with size.

[3] Physicists even suspect they're wrong, as in every other case a singularity is not a sign that nature breaks down, but rather a sign that the mathematical models break down, and are thus incomplete.

"Compassionate" Politicians - Exactly Not

(HT) Just in case you were worried politicians might actually care about their constituents, someone ran the numbers.

Using investment rather than the welfare state bureaucracy, you can purchase an annuity of more than your annual income for the price of the social security tax you were paying anyway. Combining Murray's numbers with La Wik's, you can have private doctors for about the cost of public doctors, if that's what you are actually after. In other words, drop wait times, lose the bad attitude, and provide an incentive for smart students to become doctors, and in return get doctors for everyone.

We all know politicians are liars. But do you really get what that means? "Our new initiative will help the poor and the sick by...." Whatever the initiative will do, you can be sure it is not helping the poor or the sick.

I have no idea if the authors actually connected, but I first read a version of this idea on Unqualified Reservations; MM noted that simply giving every American a financial instrument equivalent to their legislative due would be vastly more effective at the stated goals than what's actually going on.

This is how you can tell that the stated goals are just noise. The solutions are generally practised elsewhere, simpler to design, not difficult to understand, and if ignorance is a barrier, then simply showing your representative Murray's article should sweep it away. Despite this, what's actually created are byzantine networks that both intentionally obfuscate and always seem to put lots of money in the pockets of politician's friends...

What's even more interesting to me is that it works. The golden goose never seriously questions the story that its egg is being sold to provide bread for poor children. It's even more remarkable if you consider how easy it is to draw a person into outrage at their governments, as long as you limit the discussion to concrete particulars.
(Just in case you're worried that the person does have good things to say about their government as well, check to see if they're using vague happy-speak or whether they can talk specifically of actual uncompromised benefits, without ignoring their downsides.)

Murray also touches on the real issue. "The welfare state is pernicious ultimately because it drains too much of the life from life." If socialism simply taxed the wallet, it would just be annoying. The real problem is that socialism taxes the soul. I was tempted to think this is a side effect, but I found out that the degradation of family and community greatly benefits the perpetrators of the welfare state, although I hesitate to say it is 'intentional.' For example, did Alfred Kinsey want to promote violent, jealous rages, or was he just out to prove his own impulses were morally sound? To the democratic state, however, all those warped children are sources of power. So, Kinsey's friends get funding and exposure, while his enemies, the opponents of human misery, perhaps equally oblivious of their sociological role, become persecuted.

Meta-science Dismissed

I was reading about some reasons to distrust meta-analysis, and when I went to evaluate the ideas' merits, I remembered a source of error that I'd read about recently. I enjoy Eades' epistemological takedowns, but this one basically amounts to, "Meta-analyses are usually done wrong."

Eades is correct to dismiss meta-analyses, though perhaps not for the reasons he thinks. (I suspect experience guided him.) Although he has good reasons; a meta-study including methodologically poor studies is going to be a poor meta-study, and a meta-study has to be very careful to include data fairly. If it fails to do either, I would call it a mistake, not a study; it's quite possible for a meta-analysis to do both properly.

This mainly impacts journalistic writing, as they'll happily write on any study that fits their agenda, and generally forget caveats and other subtleties. If you're in a position to read the actual paper, you're in a position to tell if they're cherry-picking data.

However, how many meta-studies do you suppose correct for the fact that neutral or negative studies don't result in papers? I'm not sure how I would check, but I'm going with negative zero. They can't even try to deal with cherry-picking that occurred before the paper is published.

It's a shame. Yesterday, the meta-study was my favourite kind of statistical study.

Flynn Effect vs. Retards?

The clinical cutoff for the mental cripple is an IQ of 70. Flynn noticed that the average - normed to IQ 100 - is getting smarter. There's a qualitative cutoff at the mental cripple stage. Such a person is literally too stupid to support themselves, and require lifelong care. Basically, childcare extends across adulthood.

Setting aside edge cases (which can be statistically smoothed out) is the cutoff actually dropping, as the Flynn effect would predict?

An Obvious Dilemma?

Blogging and print journalism seem to share a dilemma.

Obvious thought is not necessary; the audience can figure it out on their own. The only real barrier is inclination, which can be overcome simply by vaguely gesturing in a particular direction.
Non-obvious thought is automatically more useful, but deters audiences, because it is difficult both to convey and to understand.

I'm not interested in reading or writing about the obvious, and you're reading this blog; you're probably the same way. There don't seem to be enough of us to fully support blogs that pursue non-obvious ideas.

This can somewhat be overturned by posting long enough to put forth a full explanation. Beyond generating complaints, I wonder what effects long posts actually have on readers. Books work; is there some no-mans-land in the middle?

I wonder if a compromise would work. Perhaps consistent posts on the obvious peppered with eyeball busting treatises, at say 10-1. I suspect there's a lot of intersection between readers who want to be in the choir and readers who want an uphill read.

I think this dilemma has defined the idea of 'news.' One way to be both simple and useful is to supply small updates to existing bodies of knowledge. Unfortunately for the purposes of discourse, small and obvious amounts to insignificant. Thus, neither actionable ideas nor mind-changing ideas are economically viable to share. My issues with journalism may stem from journalism bloating beyond areas like weather, where facts that are insignificant as ideas can have significant physical consequences.

The part about 'existing knowledge' seems like it would drive expectations in the wrong way, too. The existing knowledge is necessary to make the update obvious, but having been raised on a diet of the obvious, can you deal properly with the non-obvious? Isn't your first instinct going to be to treat it as obvious but wrong? It was certainly my first instinct, and it would rather neatly explain around 3/4 of blog comments.

This dilemma has probably shaped the idea of 'science' as well. Specialists cannot be economically sustained by selling the ideas they develop; hence grants. Given the abysmal efficiency we're seeing grants achieve, I hope this one is a false dilemma. Since selling to a journal-equivalent is not sufficient, science should find some other voluntary exchange which does supply enough wealth. (Indeed, science did not begin in the age of grants, though measuring science by number of papers began then.)

On the other hand, sharing ideas is something humans seem to do for free. From time to time. Experiments remain expensive, but I have to ask; is there demand for science? If grants weren't cornering the market, would there be efforts to find voluntary alternatives, or would science die out, as grant-proponents (naturally) say?

More importantly, is there actually a market for ideas per se? Funding thinkers certainly puts more ideas out there, and conversely, perverted and neglected IP rights suppress the idea market. But exceeding the actual demand inherently implies waste. If ideas cannot be sold above the cost of production, there are more ideas than people want. Perhaps neglecting the market is actually the good choice. Perhaps the only reason there are so many ideas out there is that one day long ago, a scholar was frustrated that their preferred leisure was unprofitable, and then, through the devil's own luck, came into power.

Taxation versus Crime

I was surprised to discover how badly neglected the direct link between taxation and crime is.

Criminals commit crime because they perceive that crime pays. Conversely, the more rewarding legitimate work is, the more limited the rewards of sacrificing legitimacy are, in both quality and quantity. Anything that reduces that reward is going to directly stimulate crime. All this can be derived more or less a priori.

I've only found one place discussing this link, and the data look bad to me. Beyond the simple confirm/deny dichotomy, different types of crime will respond to variance in payoff differently.

This means a few things. Even setting aside anarcho-capitalist flavoured violations of property rights, raising taxes has an inescapable odour of immorality. Even setting aside corruption, government waste not only wastes the honest dollar, it creates new dishonest dollars. (Though I stress that rewards, both honest and dishonest, need not be financial.)

Finally, a patchwork would not end up taxing at the Laffer maximum, because a patch with lower taxation will inevitably have a lower crime rate, thus attracting immigration, all else equal. Competition implies market implies consumer goodies.